Dragonflight and PVP ilvl

PVP War Mode and World PvP
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I’m posting this here because I think this section of the forums is probably the most appropriate? I think anyways.

According to an interview done in April, Blizzard is going to equalize PVP gear in PVP setting, and make it so it doesn’t work in the world.

With Shadowlands, Blizzard had built a system that rewards PVP players for playing PVP, getting better in PVP and climbing the PVP ladder, not only with cosmetic rewards, but also with better gear. Said better gear could be used not only for BGs and Arenas, but also in the world (with War Mode on). You could now have high-end, top of the line gear for all the PVP content in the game without having to touch M+ and Raids. You might argue that world content is PVE, but I argue that War Mode On World is PVP content, and questing and such is required even from PVPers anyways. They’re taking that away in Dragonflight, unless I got the information wrong. If I did, just disregard this post.

Being able to defeat your enemies (be them NPCs or players) in the game is power, and it comes from knowledge of the game, equipment that you use to build your character’s power, and the skill to put those to use. Rewards usually are either vanity (including mounts, achievements, titles, transmogs, bragging rights) and more power though better gear. These have more or less always been the foundations of the game even since release. Now, I’m completely against stuff like Titanforging which makes it so there’s a theoretical unreachable ceiling, but at the point where we are now, both for PVE AND PVP I think Blizzard hit the nail on the head, since everything is very clear and non-RNG (for PVP, I mean). I hadn’t been playing the game for a long while, and when I got into Shadowlands (S3 had just hit) and I started gearing up, I couldn’t believe they got everything so right. Slowly buying honor pieces, slowly leveling them up, then getting my conquest pieces, then every time I hit a new rank I got to upgrade all pieces again, and it requires honor to do so, so I had an extra incentive to do BGs. Just perfect. And now they want to do away with this system to make everyone equals in PVP. I got to 1800 last season, I’m not some 2100+ player complaining that I won’t have stronger gear than everyone else anymore. I am complaining because I loved the mountain being there for me to climb, and every new 200 rating I felt great, while still looking up to people above me and looking forward to push it further and get even stronger. And I could use this equipment set to do my World Quests too! And fight people too! It was perfect: PVE was World, Dungeons and Raids, and PVP was War Mode World, Arenas and BGs. They even solved the PVE trinkets problem with the 2 PVP trinkets set bonus. All thanks to the Shadowlands PVP ilvl ranks system. And all that is gonna be gone in Dragonflight. Threaten to take away gearing from PVE players and watch their comments on it.

Now, maybe Blizzard is doing this because they see the numbers, and the PVP participation is going down or something, but I wonder, why did they implement this system in the first place? I assume numbers were going down before anyways? I hope that if they implement this system, and see the numbers still going down, then they’ll walk back on this and go back to this system we have right now, which I believe is just perfect. One of the most characteristic aspects of “RPG”s is the building of power of your character rewarding time, effort and skill, and taking it away from PVP is a bad idea. Maybe this will save PVP somehow, but if it doesn’t, please return it to this model. I’d ask please don’t take the mountain we can climb right now away, but if you do, please return it if you see that taking it away didn’t help the PVP community.

Some people say the devs don’t read the forums, but this post is not just targeting them, it’s also targeting players. I understand the frustration of facing people in Arena with 3k more hp than myself, I’ve been there, but this is an extremely small price to pay for the system. Also, after I started improving and started playing with a fixed group we started beating those guys with a bit more ilvl. And even if I hit a wall, it’s ok, I’m not entitled to the best gear in the game unless I myself improve my gameplay.

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They are doing this because non-equalized player vs player gaming is a early 2000s outdated concept.

Who wants to spend weeks or months just to complete on an even level with their opponents?

Plenty of other games out there you can just login and PvP no other requirements.

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Yeah, and WoW is the game where there was gear progression for PVP. And getting power for getting higher ratings. I don’t think these changes will help PVP in the game, and if they don’t, I hope Blizz goes back to the model we currently have. WoW is a social experience, and taking away part of the social experience is a bad thing.

Make a tournament realm in which everyone can buy everything and play PVP there if they’re worried about the scaling.

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There’s already a thread out there about this, so I’d read through that.

Long story short, your opinion sides with imbalance, which is highly detrimental to any competitive environment.

The only reason that getting gear ever existed in wow pvp was because wow was a PVE first game and it took them this long to realize that PVE concepts don’t belong in PVP.

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Eh i think that some gear gap is fine because i dont see mmos as a competitive game, you jsut spend time, get more powerful, classes works and plays differently and uniquely enough and thats all i want from a mmo.
TLDR i want to have the biggest sword, and use it to kill other players and stuff.

But if you make a tournament and declare that X mode is competitive having giant gear gaps in said model is just not logical imo.

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No, they are doing this because blizzard caters to pve players. Period. Ive said it once, ill say it again, in any pvp situation, your stats should go BOOM to your pvp lvl and gear vs any other player, in the world or not. Vs PVE content, obviously no. But in the world catering to pve players… is a joke.

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My opinion sides with gear progression. You call it imbalance when it’s barely an issue until you get to 2100 rating, at which point the gap completely disappears between players.

We’ll see if the lack of progression makes people play less PVP in the long run. Surely if it reduces the number of players playing BGs, Arenas, etc, it’ll make Blizzard re-evaluate their stance. I believe it’ll affect people similarly to how it would affect taking away gearing from PVE, making people play less Arena skirmishes, less Solo Shuffles, less RBGs, less Rated Arenas, and ESPECIALLY less BGs.

Also, I’d like to mention how nobody against what I’m saying actually commented on any points I made.

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Highly disagree.

In instanced PvP, sure, stats go boom and you’re on an equal playing field. There’s an even amount of players on both sides and it’s a team based.

In WPvP? No, gear should matter. People like to talk about “even playing field” but fail to realize that there’s nothing fair or even about WPvP to begin with.

If you’re outnumbered and get ganked 3v1, that’s not very fair or even. Want to know what is fair and even though? Using the gear I obtained through Rated PvP to make up for the difference of being out numbered if I outgear the people attacking me.

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In PvE you should have gear progression

In instanced (not just rated) PvP you should have gear balancing to encourage competitiveness

In World PvP, all bets are off. This is where you take what you’ve gained from instanced PvE content and instanced PvP content and show what you can do. There should NOT be toys aside from engineering

Although I do understand why they’re making it to where gear doesn’t matter in World PvP and that’s because they killed it so they have to bring it back and this is how that is done, later down the road I know they’ll make gear matter again.

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i like player versus player to be the deciding outcome and not player versus gear. wow has enough abilities to make it an even chess match instead of one side of the board having all queens.

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Gear will matter in WPvP. They said in an interview that currently PvP gear scales in War Mode. In Dragonflight, they plan to remove that and it’ll go based off of base ilvl. You’ll have to upgrade your gear through rated to be competitive in WPvP. Which, personally, I like.

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oh. then yea i dont see an issue at all. this is perfect.

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Nooo I’m saying pvp gear vs pve gear, I think the rating should reflect what pvp gear you have, however if a pve geared player decides to attack you your pvp gear instantly bumps to “pvp” mode so the pve gear doesn’t demolish you.

Also when you’re doing pve stuff your pvp gear should be mediocre and suck compared to pve gear…. But the minute they attack you boom big swole pvp gear.

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I still don’t understand. Why are people under some weird assumption that PvE gear is just better than PvP gear?

The only thing that’ll destroy you is ilvl, regardless of PvP or PvE. An equally geared PvE player will already be at a disadvantage against an equally geared PvP player because of trinket set bonus and lack of Versatility, which is found on all PvP gear.

Gear should just be gear. It should be viable in all forms of content no matter where you got it from, and that’s what’s being done with PvP gear already since you have the ability to upgrade it through rating to be good in PvE.

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Unfortunately, it seems as if PVE gear > PVP gear with WM on, given the fact that:

  1. PVP iLvl scaling won’t work in WM
  2. PVE iLvl upgrades on PVP gear will be rating gated

It will be easier to get higher iLvl PVE gear than to deal with rating gated upgrades. In other words: M+ and raiders will definitely (and perhaps ironically) have an edge over PVP players in WPVP. Though it is certainly true that PVP gear will (presumably) have the lion’s share of Vers stat options, and there is the trinket bonus to contend with (given that it works in WM), that isn’t going to matter if the iLvl difference is too great.

The way it currently works - or, even better, how Actioncat has suggested - technically makes more sense. That being said, I’m well aware of the fact that this isn’t going to change; after all, they’ve already implemented some sort of WPVP-specific gear, taking all of these factors into account. The issue with WPVP-specific gear will be this: is it on par with the PVE gear, or is it just going to be a useless set that nobody will want? If this WPVP-specific gear is on par with PVE gear, then I’d personally be content; however, I get the impression it won’t be. Call it a “Hunch” (based on history).

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I don’t see that as an issue though. Yes, PvP ilvl won’t work in WM, but that’s because PvP ilvl scales high, with Conquest gear scaling to Mythic ilvl. It’s significantly easier to get base Honor and Conquest gear than it is to even get Heroic or Mythic ilvl PvE gear.

I do a ton of WPvP, specifically solo WPvP, and I’ve never ran into the issue of fighting a strong PvE geared player. Most players I see in War Mode with good gear are people who are duelist or elite.

Only a small percentage of players actually do high M+ keys and mythic raiding. I don’t get the mentality of some casual PvPers who think their Honor/Conquest gear was harder to obtain some of the gear in PvE. Gear should be gear, you should be rewarded the appropriate ilvl equivalent to the content’s level of difficulty you’re doing.

As said above, it’s significantly easier getting basic honor and conquest gear than it is to get Heroic or Mythic ilvl PvE gear.

To put some perspective into this, my wife does PvE content. She does high M+ keys, and her io score last season was 3K. I can tell you it took me significantly less time to get my BiS PvP gear than it took for her to get her BiS PvE gear. Climbing the rating only got difficult past 1900. :dracthyr_shrug:

I have beta and I’ve seen the gear you’re talking about. The gear is not designed to be specifically for WPvP; it’s put in place as an alternative gearing path for people who do WPvP. It also has a pretty cool set bonus.

So far in beta, they haven’t removed the functionality of any PvP gear scaling in War Mode. It either hasn’t been implemented yet or they will go back on their plans. Hopefully they do implement it though.

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You typed a far better response than I had time to come up with, well written.

Just need to keep the pvp and pve separate. Grinding a raid or dungeon shouldn’t give you any advantage fighting other real players, and pvp gear should be garbage in any pve setting. Just makes sense to me.

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Right… except that getting the PVP gear isn’t the problem that people have with this. Nobody is saying that it’s harder to get base iLvl Honor/Conquest gear. It will definitely be easier to get, and where PVP is concerned, that’s a good thing! The problem that people have with this is that it isn’t scaling up while fighting enemy players in a mode (i.e.: WPVP) that many PVP players consider to be PVP content.

It seems that the devs have made the (rather weak) argument that they feel as if PVP gear would make the world content feel trivial, too quick, too easy; that, and/or it would make PVE gear progressions less appealing - and this is certainly understandable; however, this is not necessarily true. It all depends on how you implement the scaling system. It’s a design issue. For instance, in WoD-style scaling, PVP iLvl scaled against enemy players - not enemy mobs, thus maintaining the division between PVP gear and PVE gear.

The common rebuttal then is something like, “But then what about the PVE players?!” Well, what about them? Are they incapable of getting baseline PVP sets to play with while they turn WM on? Do they not also have the option of just opting out of WM, altogether? Wasn’t that the whole point of having the toggle in the first place? At least that’s what they told us back when it was first implemented.

I suppose, Alphon, that a lot of people are just confused about how this was handled. It seems… weird to have PVP gear not scale with WM on (like now), or - at the very least - not scale while fighting enemy players (like in WoD). Honestly, it kind of seems as if they just wanted to keep the rating gates - that people don’t like, mind you - in the game. It seems like they’re making excuses. Now, I certainly agree that this system is (much) better than what we have now, and I am looking forward to DF; however, I think it’s fair to say that it also could have been better still.

True; however, this is a misinterpretation or misrepresentation of the discussion.

Well, to be fair, BiS PVE gear from M+ doesn’t require anything higher than +15s. In terms of the PVE iLvl, that gear is comparable to glad gear. The question is: is it easier to do a weekly +15 or hit glad? Just because it’s easier for you, personally, to hit glad doesn’t mean that it’s statistically easier, overall.

I’m aware that you’ve got beta, Alphon. I have been reading your posts on the beta forum. I’m certainly happy to see someone bringing up WPVP.

In other words… it’s WPVP-specific gear. I mean, it’s gear you purchase with a currency that literally comes from completing WPVP activities. Who else is it meant for if not people that enjoy WPVP? Poh-tay-toe, poh-tah-toe… call it what you will.

All kidding aside, I get what you mean; however, I really do think you’re splitting hairs here.

They probably will. I wouldn’t worry about it.

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I understand the problem people have with it, trust me I do, but I personally don’t think it’s a problem. In my eyes, if it scaled up while fighting other players, you’re essentially equalizing gear. I don’t think gear should be equalized in War Mode. In instanced PvP, being equalized is fine because its a controlled PvP environment (2v2, 10v10, 40v40, etc).

In War Mode though, there’s no cap to how many players can be in a zone or shard. If you get ganked by 3 people, the only thing that helps you against them is gear. Gear balances out being outnumbered if you outgear them, regardless if its PvP or PvE gear. That’s my stance on it; Im a solo WPvPer and gear helps whenever I’m being outnumbered by other players.

But then that’s kind of unfair, don’t you think? I could see the argument as it stands in Shadowlands, because PvP gear is trash in PvE. That’s not the case in Dragonflight anymore though, we can take the gear we earned in PvP (if we upgraded it through rating) and we can use it on par with PvE gear.

If we can take our PvP gear into PvE (through upgrading), why cant PvE’ers take their PvE gear into PvP (only in War Mode)?

If we weren’t able to upgrade our gear to be viable in PvE, I’d completely agree.

You don’t need to hit glad though. Glad is 50 games won above 2400, I certainly can’t get glad. Gear upgrades for PvP though cap out at 2100 which is equivalent to mythic ilvl. Even if you can only get 1800/1950, you’re short by only 3-7 ilvls below 2100 gear.

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Rating locked gear is always bad for the game. But as wpvp is already dead, I don’t it really matters lol.

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